Gas-hydrate technologies remain at an early stage of development, despite the maturity of many of the individual exploration technologies being used. While some technologies may be widely deployed in the conventional oil and gas industry, most are not mature in the context of gas hydrates. For example, while core recovery is common practice in the oil and gas industry, coring technologies had to be adapted to enable gas-hydrate coring, and none of the pressure corers have yet reached a commercial scale; 2 Addressing issues relating to operations, e.g. number and type of wells, and size of drilling vessels; 3 Controlled-Source Electromagnetic Methods; 4 Lab work / theoretical research; 5 Bench-scale; 6 Pilot-scale; 7 Proved commercial-scale process, with optimization work in progress; 8 Commercial-scale, widely deployed, with limited optimization potential. Source: SBC Energy Institute analysis